


Mending

by imsfire



Series: Celebrate Rogue One characters 2018 [7]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Cassian does the mending, Gen, Jyn is offstage but definitely with us, Light Angst, Mission Gone Wrong, literally and metaphorically, of his own and others clothes and also of his mind, slightly wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 07:04:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14949872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Cassian's jacket gets torn on a mission and he sets to work to mend it, and thinks about mending other things; the damage of other lives, and his own...





	Mending

**Author's Note:**

> For Celebrate Rogue One, week two, day seven; a domestic AU for Cassian.

Cassian doesn’t like running.  It draws attention, because he doesn’t run smoothly and he never has; he’s clumsy and awkward and he gets sweaty and out of breath.  He’d always prefer to operate without fuss and without being seen, to slip away unnoticed, to be quieter than a shadow.  Running makes that impossible.

But sometimes things don’t work out the way he wants, and it’s nothing new to him.  When there’s a choice of run or get caught, like now, then Cassian runs.  The Sardigan hired muscle grabs at him and slashes with unsheathed claws, and he flees.  Feels a catch at his sleeve and a minuscule drag before his speed rips him free.

He’s still got the data-chip.  Provided he gets away, that’s mission accomplished.  He’s even got the bonus of knowing now that this particular contact will play both sides if there’s a profit in it.  Which is Force-damned stinking bad, but useful to know just the same.

Ungainly and angry Cassian runs until he can slow down with confidence.  It’s easy to melt into the market crowds again once he’s lost any pursuit. 

Walking, he fingers the arm of his jacket where the heavy tried to get hold of him.

There’s a rip.  Fuck their bobbly eyes, they got him. 

There’s no blood, and that’s reassuring; it wouldn’t have been the first time he hadn’t even noticed an injury.  But the tear has rough edges, so it must have been one of those sharp claws.  Vicious, to come on claws-out and go for him like that, out of nowhere.  A blade would have cut more cleanly, been easier to fix.  Vicious _and_ inconsiderate.

Irritated all over again despite his escape, he shrugs the coat off and turns it lining outwards quickly, and ties it casually round his waist.  Consciously he adjusts his gait to the easy walk of a man with no reason to hurry and nothing to hide.

He strolls across the city.  All the way through the maze of streets and lanes, through the elaborate sequence of double-backs and blind alleys he’d worked out previously, to the spaceport.

Back at the ship he fires up the engines and comms local ATC with the departure codes Jyn sliced for him yesterday.  Tells K-2 “Let’s get going.”

“There’s a hole in your sleeve,” K says, scanning him. “Did you have a spare jacket with you?  It’s not like you to be careless,” he adds reprovingly.

“I got snagged,” Cassian says. “I’ll fix it once we’re on our way.”

The Quartermasters department is short-staffed and under-resourced, and only one of the team sews particularly well by hand.  He’d rather mend it himself.  Not just because Jyn’s face when he comes home damaged is a sadness he can’t quite bear, even now.  He can’t pull the fluff over her eyes.  She’d lived insecure, on the thin thread of her wits, had chanced her luck daily, for too long not to be aware of such basic facts.  A day when someone ripped up your coat is a day when they tried to rip _you_ up.

He hates reminding her of it.

Cassian keeps a small mending kit on board; for emergencies, for just this kind of occasion.  Thread to match his own clothes, three sizes of needles, an assortment of plain and camo patches, buttons, a replacement zipper, webbing and interfacing. 

Once they’re into the hyperspace lane and safe from being followed, he leaves K-2 at the helm and goes aft to settle down and inspect the damage. 

It’s a crooked rip, right through to the lining. The edges of the fabric are puckered, threads pulled and snarled messily, padding coming out in twists.  He selects an inner and an outer patch and sits smoothing and teasing the weave back into shape and tucking the padding inside again, before casting big open tacks across the whole tear.

On each patch, he turns the edges under before pinning and basting them in position; then over-sews neatly, running small stitches round the interior reinforcement first and then the exterior one.  Then threads another needle with a slightly heavier nylon and starts to sew back and forth in precise straight lines, darning right across the patches to secure all the layers together. 

It’s good to be able to mend things; and it’s a job that takes his focus and calms his mind.  With his hands and his mind occupied, concentrating on a necessary immediate task, he can keep the rest at bay; the nagging anger about the mission, the frustration of a contact no longer to be relied upon, the thought of worrying Jyn. 

All the faces of the lost, that hover sometimes in the background of his thought. 

They still come back to him sometimes; late at night, when he’s off-guard, near to sleep; or on days like this when his mission has not gone as well as he wished and an insect-hum of doubt is tormenting him.  They look up at him as they’ve done before, those faces of dead men; through a gun-sight, waiting to die.  He stitches and focuses on the stitches, and the faces recede again.

Unseen now between its covers, the original tear could have grown bigger unchecked, could have split further until the jacket was suddenly past salvage from some simple unguarded movement.  But stitch after stich Cassian strengthens it until that can’t happen. 

Over the last year he’s become the go-to mender for the whole team.  Most soldiers can bash together a sewing bodge in the field but Cassian takes pride in doing the job well.  It’s good to be able to mend things.  Today, his coat, next week maybe Jyn’s shirt or Bodhi’s scarf, or Baze’s overalls.

And next month, maybe he can help mend a damaged trust or reassure a mind shaken apart by fear,  restore a network of contacts, help someone see there’s still hope in the galaxy.  He gathers information, connects up the lost souls, gives them a path to follow and a patch to cover the bloody places in their lives.  The hope, that they have enough, are enough, to see the rebellion through.  Enough to mend all the broken worlds.

The galaxy can be mended, and maybe too the wrongs of a single life can be, one day.  By small increments, he thinks, stitching and fixing and tying-off his thread on a finished patch and over-darn; by tiny accumulations of good deeds and care and kindnesses, perhaps so can he.  Most of his clothes have patches and darns but he keeps going.  This is just one more.

His friends didn’t give up, they value him despite everything he’s done.  They refuse to turn away, from a man who’s been an assassin for almost twenty years.  So he refuses in turn, to discard what they still hold dear; neither damaged self, nor torn clothing.  In the blue shadows of hyperspace, in the dark corners of a hundred outer rim worlds, quietly in mufti or hidden under a smooth Imperial uniform, Cassian goes on mending what he can, every mission, every day.  Sewing up the mess and making good the damage, to keep things going, to keep the unbroken hope. 

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I invented Sardigans. Sorry. Sometimes I just want an insta-alien instead of spending three hours being happily distracted on Wookieepedia.


End file.
